Donald Trump – Defender or Destroyer?

Unless you were born yesterday, you know that the political left simply does not understand how the country could have elected Donald J. Trump Sr.

In that respect, Hillary Clinton’s book “What Happened” asks the same question every Democrat was asking at about 3 a.m. EST on November 9, 2016.

In trying to explain it they’ve fixated on everything from Russia to racist white male Neo-Nazis to voter stupidity.

The truth is, the left elected President Trump, although they surely didn’t mean to do so.

The easy explanation is that the people were conned into believing that President Trump was a patriot, while the other candidates weren’t.

Actually the voter revolt was the result of clues that something nasty had taken over Washington.

First there was the IRS targeting of conservative non-profit applications. Then there were the Veterans Administration whistleblowers alleging that the VA was falsifying records to make it appear that more vets were being seen in a timely manner than was actually happening, and finally, hints that the FBI might be spying on American citizens for political reasons.

There was also the uneasy feeling that the economy was being manipulated through both financial and regulatory left-wing policies.

So when along came someone who seemed to have not just the desire but the financial ability to compete with the left’s candidates they were ready to at least give him a long look. When he said he was going to drain the swamp, they believed him.

Fast forward to current events, and the more we find out about Washington’s seedy back story, the more people who voted for Trump, even those who did do reluctantly, are convinced they made a good choice.

True, many of those same people who applauded his plain-spoken, even crude criticisms of the establishment and his showboating during the campaign have the occasional reason to cringe because surprise, the guy who ran for office is the same guy that’s IN the office.

Although as President, he didn’t immediately walk onto the White House and fire everyone, his election has surely taken the lid off of the Washington septic tank.

And once again, it is the Democrats and the hard left who are responsible for the sunlight.

In trying so hard to remove the President from office on any pretext, they have inadvertently exposed their own questionable tactics, operatives and methods.

Maybe that was his plan all along, and maybe the left just handed him the tools of their own destruction because they couldn’t help it.

For instance, take the current issue of the Schiff-authored Democratic rebuttal to the Nunes memo.

After hysterical claims by Schiff and others that the Nunes Republican memo couldn’t be published due to national security concerns, the Dems reportedly actually included sources and methods in their memo, clearly hoping that President Trump would have to refuse to publish the memo as written.

They apparently thought they would win either way. If the Schiff memo is released as written, perhaps actual living, breathing people would be compromised, showing a lack of judgement on the President’s part. If it is sent back for redactions, as it has been, they can claim bias.

That’s not exactly subtle politics and the clumsiness of it is not lost on anyone.

Or look at the Rob Porter story.

No one is going to certify a wife-beater for a security clearance. The real question is, why has it taken the FBI 15 months to complete a background check and get it to the White House? All they would have had to do is pull Porter’s conditional security clearance and issue a report detailing why they couldn’t clear him for employment.

Numerous media outlets have reported that Porter’s first wife reached out to the FBI in late January, 2017, yet the FBI didn’t report that information to the White House until November of 2017. Porter apparently had at least a conditional security clearance during that entire time.

Private employers have to get background checks too, and it’s unlikely one would wait 15 months for a definitive answer on employability. On the other hand, they can’t refuse to employ someone without verifiable cause.

There are certainly some unanswered questions as to why Porter wasn’t at least placed on leave of absence in November. For that we would have to know whether the FBI verified the police reports both ex-wives allegedly made at the time of the incidents or simply reported that two ex-wives had issues with Porter.

Given the adversarial relationship between the FBI and the administration, it’s possible that the White House simply didn’t believe the allegations, but at this point we don’t know.

Suffice it say, all kinds of fecal matter has bubbled to the surface in the past 15 months since the election and much of it simply confirms the suspicions of the nation.

As for the question in the headline to this piece…perhaps the real answer is that he is a catalyst, rather than an agent.

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